Internet Systems Consortium, Inc., also known as ISC, is a Delaware-registered, 501(c)(3)non-profit that supports the infrastructure of the universal, self-organizing Internet by developing and maintaining core production-quality software, protocols, and operations.[1][2] ISC is the developer of several key Internet technologies that enable the global Internet including BIND, ISC DHCP, OpenReg, ISC AFTR, an implementation of an IPv4/IPv6 transition protocol based on Dual-Stack Lite, which is under development by several large ISPs within the IETF protocol standards development process.

ISC operates one of the 13 global authoritative DNS root servers, F-root.[3][4] Over the years, a number of additional software systems were operated under ISC (INN, Lynx) to better support the Internet's infrastructure. ISC also expanded their operational activities to include Internet hosting facilities for other open-source projects such as NetBSD, XFree86, kernel.org, secondary name service (SNS) for more than 50 top-level domains, and a DNS OARC (Operations, Analysis and Research Center) for monitoring and reporting of the Internet's DNS.

ISC is actively involved in community design process, author and participate in the creation of the IETF standards, including the production of managed open source software used as reference implementation of the DNS.

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Originally the company was founded as the Internet Software Consortium, Inc. The founders included Paul Vixie, Rick Adams and Carl Malamud. The intention of this corporation was to be to continue the development of BIND software. The founders believed that it was necessary for BIND's maintenance and development be managed and funded by an independent organization. ISC was designated as a root name server operator by IANA, originally as NS.ISC.ORG and later as F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.

In January 2004, ISC reorganized under the new name Internet Systems Consortium, Inc.[5]

In July 2013, ISC spun off their Security Business Unit to Farsight Security, Inc. a new company started by ISC founder Paul Vixie.[6]

ISC develops and maintains a variety of software, including BIND, OpenReg, a DHCP implementation, and INN.[1] Some aspects of its software have, in the past, been developed by developers that are commercially employed by Nominum.[7]

ISC operates the DNS "F" root server,[1] the first such server to be distributed using anycast. In 2007 it was announced that ISC and ICANN would sign an agreement regarding the operation of F, the first such agreement made between ICANN and a root-server operator.[8]

The Internet Domain Survey searches the Domain Name System (DNS) to discover every Internet host. The survey began when only a few hundred hosts were Internet linked.[11] The earliest published reports dated 1993 were performed by Network Wizards owner Mark K. Lottor. The Internet host count was 1,313,000 in January 1993 and 818,374,269 in the latest January 2011 survey.[12]

ISC is the current sponsor and publisher with technical operations subcontracted to Network Wizards.[11]